Main menu

Monthly Archives: April 2014

Post navigation

Integrating Environmental and Human Health. Knowledge @Wharton. April 24, 2014.
Sustainable health care is a work in progress. While virtually everyone recognizes the need for the industry to reduce its considerable impact on the environment, sustainability is rarely a high priority among decision makers at U.S. hospitals. There is so much short-term uncertainty and financial pressure in the industry today that it’s hard for many administrators and supply chain managers to focus on what seem to be secondary, long-term issues. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Faith in Equality: Economic Justice and the Future of Religious Progressives. Brookings Institution. E. J. Dionne, Jr. et al. April 24, 2014.
Religious voices have played an essential role throughout American history, inspiring and animating many movements for social reform. Today, with rising income inequality, declining social mobility, and the persistence of poverty, there is wide room for social action. Authors E.J. Dionne, Jr., William A. Galston, Korin Davis, and Ross Tilchin argue that economic justice should be the focus of today’s progressive religious movement. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Politicians opposed to immigration are making electoral gains throughout Europe, and legislators in the United States are also polarized over immigration reform, especially the status of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. The author argues that “immigration has become a major and contentious political issue in the world’s wealthiest nations” – even though immigration is a necessity for European countries with older populations. Key to successful immigration policies is assimilation, and Mandelbaum points out that the level of integration varies between the U.S. and Europe. Immigration throughout U.S. history, along with the strong track record in delivering needed labor along with innovation, has led to a strong political force, while undocumented immigrants, lacking legal status to live or work in the country, are on the decline. Mandelbaum predicts less enduring political backlash on immigration in the U.S., and increased political intolerance, despite great economic need, from Europe. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

The report evaluates the energy and geopolitical shifts that have arisen from the production of shale gas and light tight oil in the United States. It begins by assessing how much the unconventional energy trend has already impacted energy, geopolitics, and national security. The report then posits several possible energy futures that could emerge from the unconventionals revolution. Finally, it offers views on the major geostrategic question: how will the United States seek to utilize this, so far, domestic resource trend, and given the range of potential future energy outcomes, what might the geopolitical and national security implications be. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

The study demonstrates that women’s increased labor force participation and earnings have enabled some families to maintain their places on the economic ladder or, particularly among families at the bottom, to move up. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Transition away from fossil fuels toward new alternatives is not going smoothly. Proponents of alternatives confront a powerful industry with longstanding incentives and favorable tax policies, suggests Hickey. Around the globe, economic struggles and immediate profits take priority over development of alternative energies. Hickey suggests that “Most world governments are so compromised with the fossil-fuel industry they cannot easily walk away without leaving their financial coffers worse off as the true costs of energy are hidden in a producer and consumer subsidy labyrinth that promotes the addiction.” Eliminating subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry, highlighting the true costs, would speed up the development of alternative energies. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

The European Union and the United States are negotiating the most economically significant regional free trade agreement in history: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Publics in Germany and the United States support TTIP and trade expansion in general, especially with each other. But when it comes to specifics, both Americans and Germans oppose many details of this far-reaching initiative. Moreover, they disagree with one another on making transatlantic regulatory standards similar. And, in the United States, there is a striking generation gap in attitudes relating to TTIP. [Note: contains copyrighted material].